Financial author to talk Monday

By DAVID GUNTER

Feature correspondent

SANDPOINT — What does it take to get a best-selling author, CNBC contributor and president of his own financial firm to come to Bonner County for a special community presentation? Turns out that having a longtime friend in the neighborhood does the trick.

On Monday, Aug. 7, Scott Nations — the man behind the above professional checklist — will speak at the Sandpoint Events Center and take the audience through a tour of both history and finance in a free event sponsored by Gateway Financial Partners and benefiting Kinderhaven.

Nations’ latest book, an Amazon No. 1 New Release, is titled, “A History of the United States in Five Crashes.” On top of his thriving business, the popularity of the book has kept the author busy. Fortunately for local history buffs and investors, his close friend, Ron Denova, is a principal at Gateway Financial Partners, a financial advisory firm with offices in Sandpoint and Priest River.

“This is very much a special event,” Nations said. “Ron and I have been friends for decades and he asked me to do it. I stood next to him in the trading pit in the Chicago Board of Trade for years and, in doing so, you really get to know a person.”

At Monday’s presentation, Nations will lean heavily on material from his latest best seller. In studying the market crashes involved, he found at least some credence in the old adage that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

“To a certain degree, it will repeat, because we’re human,” he said. “There are differences (in the crashes), but the thing that jumped out at me are the similarities.

“There’s a Mark Twain quote: ‘History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes,” Nations added. “If we can see those similarities lining up, we might not be able to stop the crash, but we can limit the consequences.”

Two things these war stories have in common is that they come on the heels of a go-go market environment and each one has some sort of villain involved — the “charlatans” as nations calls them.

“The stock market can only crash when it’s really rallied and gotten ahead of itself,” he said. “That’s when the charlatans have the raw material to work with. I call it the ‘snake oil.’”

Lest you assume such tales of stock market history might prove too wonky — boring, even — Nations points out that these are stories about real people.

“The canvas is finance, but the medium we’re putting on it is human interest stories,” he said. “The human drama in every crash is fascinating to me. Every crash has a villain and many of them have heroes.”

Understanding that dynamic doesn’t require much in the way of financial knowledge. Instead, appreciation for a good yarn is the key to this chronicle of crashes.

“It’s like the story of the Titanic,” said Nations. “We know how it ends — and it ended badly — but, God, it’s a fascinating story. You don’t have to know anything about ships or sailing to enjoy the story of the Titanic.”

The iceberg that sank the market in 2008, according to Nations, was the “newfangled contraption of mortgage-backed securities.”

“Unfortunately, we also know how that worked out,” he said.

A further catalyst for wide-scale financial woes can be the role of financial talking heads on television and in print.

“There are histories of pundits fueling a crash once it got started,” Nations said. “There’s a duty in all of this.”

One simple preventive measure is to “pay attention to the history involved,” the author cautioned. When salespeople come hawking gold as a shield against market downturns, or hold up their investment newsletter as the one true source of information, don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees.

“Charlatanism is dangerous,” he said. “People get used to hearing it and, when somebody reasonable comes along, they tune it out. It’s a little bit like pollution. We stop paying attention and stop doing our own analysis.”

Nations’ upcoming event might center on the impacts of market crashes, but it doesn’t suggest that such crashes are inevitable. Working with a professional financial advisor, he noted, offers a sound course of action over the long haul.

“Time is on your side,” he said. “The sooner you get started investing and the longer you can remain invested, the better off you’ll be.”

Nations’ presentation on Aug. 7, will take place from 3:30-5:30 p.m. at the Sandpoint Events Center, 102 S. Euclid St., Suite 306, in Sandpoint. There is no charge for the event, but attendees are encouraged to invest in the community with a donation to Kinderhaven, Sandpoint’s children’s crisis center and group home.

To register for the presentation, call Gateway Financial Partners at 208-942-5002, or email: sandpointsupport@mygfpartners.com

For more information about Kinderhaven and its work in the community, visit online at: www.kinderhavensandpoint.com